The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

Both the Dutch Fork baseball and Lexington softball teams experienced those opposite spectrums of sports emotions in the span of a few days. After claiming Lower State titles in spectacular fashion, each team experienced a heartbreaking road defeat in its respective Game 1 series openers.

At presstime, the Silver Foxes looked to even their series with Blythewood Tuesday night in Irmo and set up a winner-take-all Saturday at possibly Segra Park in downtown Columbia or another Richland County location.

Meanwhile, the Lady Wildcats were set to play host to Game 2 of their Best-of-3 series with J.F. Byrnes on Wednesday. A win would set up a deciding contest Friday at a site to be determined

Dutch Fork vs. Blythewood

It was 20 years ago when then-player Banks Faulkner and the Lexington High School baseball team defeated Blythewood in the Class 4A final.

Fast-forward to today and Faulkner found himself Wednesday a victory away from leading the Bengals to its first-ever state title. They took a step in that direction this past Saturday with a 2-1 win in extra innings at home.

As sounds of thunder and rainfall appeared, Zach Bailes calmly hit a walkoff RBI infield single in the bottom 9th to lift the host team.

“I’ve been lucky to be a part of 4 of them (2 state titles won at Lexington as a player/ assistant and 1 at Summerville as a head coach) and the thing that I do see is this group is incredibly close,” Faulkner said. “They love each other. They play for each other. They’re willing to do whatever it takes to win as a team. So yeah, I definitely see a lot of similarities as far their closeness and their love for each other.”

The game-winner came after another infield single greatly questioned by the Dutch Fork players extended the inning.

After Mike Gregory singled with 2 outs off reliever Andrew Fulmer and stole 2nd base, Blythewood’s Josh Cowen hit a groundball to Crosby Jones at shortstop. Dutch Fork believed he was thrown out at first base, but the umpires ruled the first baseman’s foot was off the bag.

Bailes then hit a ground ball towards 2nd base that the Silver Foxes were unable to cleanly field for the force out that allowed Gregory to race home for the win.

“That’s baseball,” Dutch Fork head coach Casey Waites said. “Both teams battled for 9 innings. We had a chance first, but didn’t scratch. But, at the same time, they played small ball to move some runners from the middle and we found a way to get them out. At the end, we have a play. It’s a base hit and we had some athletes that almost made a play.”

Dutch Fork opened the game by loading the bases on starting pitcher Landon Lucas. He settled in, struck out the next 2 batters and got a ground out to end the threat. Leading off the Bottom 1st, Lucas put Blythewood on the board with a solo home run over the leftfield wall off Dutch Fork starter Sam Hatcher.

The Dutch Fork left-hander did not allow a run over the next 7 innings before he was pulled to start the 9th inning for Fulmer. The Silver Foxes tied the game in the Top 2nd on an RBI sacrifice fly by Jay Metts. Lucas then retired 18 consecutive batters and finished with 4 strikeouts before he was relieved with 1 out in the 8th by Cowen.

Cowen finished with 2 strikeouts in 1 innings, the lone baserunner coming via catcher’s interference.

“We like our position, but we know that we’re going into a hornet’s nest on Tuesday night against a really good team,” Faulkner said. “We’ll face a really, really good arm. We’ve got our work cut out for us. I know that team over there is a really good team and they’ll continue to fight.”

Lexington vs. J.F. Byrnes

The scene was eerily familiar for the Lady Wildcat players, coaching staff and fans.

In both losses to White Knoll, the Lady Wildcats saw 4-run leads disappear late and result in defeat.

After the 2nd loss on March 29, the Lady Wildcats ran off 16 consecutive victories heading into this past Monday’s Game 1 in Duncan. Through 5 innings, Lexington was cruising to what appeared to be its 17th straight win and moving a step closer to the program’s first title since 2001.

It all changed, however, in the bottom 6th. After picking up a run in the 5th to cut the Lady Wildcats’ lead to 8-3, the Lady Rebels erupted for 9 more runs in the inning to snatch control of the game.

Calee Smith capped the dramatic turnaround with a go-ahead grand slam. The Lady Rebels’ comeback was also aided by 4 Lexington errors which led to runs.

“We’ve had some big innings this year against some teams, but not of that caliber,” J.F. Byrnes head coach Brandi Aiken said.

Despite the crushing loss, Lexington head coach Laurie Epps was resilient about her team’s chances.

“There’s a reason why they play 3 games,” she said. “It’s a 3-game series for a reason. We’ve got to bounce back and we’ve got to finish what we’ve started and I’m confident in what we have. We’ve got to come to play Wednesday and take it one piece at a time.”